Behavioral Ecology & Social Evolution

As a behavioral ecology lab we are interested in evolutionary and ecological processes that generate the broad diversity of animal behavior. Our research focuses on the evolutionary ecology of social behaviors such as parental care, brood parasitism and cooperative breeding. Most recently we have investigated the importance of mutualistic and parasitic species in the evolution of sociality. Our general approach is to develop mathematical models that are applicable to a broad range of animals and to test the predictions of these (and other) models using laboratory and field experiments.